Redesigning Marketplace & Deep Contextual Inquiry

As one of Atlassian's first two UX designers in San Francisco, I led foundational UXR and redesign of the Atlassian Marketplace and internal plugin manager, extending to drive suite-wide contextual inquiry and guerrilla user testing driving overarching strategy during Atlassians mid-size growth phase

COMPANY

Atlassian

Location

San Francisco, CA • Sydney, Australia

Year

2011 – 2013

ROLE & TEAM

UX Designer & Researcher for Marketplace • Contextual Inquiry Program Founder

Overview

Atlassian builds complex enterprise work-tracking and collaboration tools like Jira, Trello, and Confluence, empowering thousands of remote teams globally. At its core, Atlassian powers agile processes so companies can move fast, track work accurately, and get shit done (one of their core principles)

Serving as one of the first two designers in the San Francisco office, partnering with 14 UX in Sydney, Australia I was tasked with driving design and research for the Atlassian Marketplace, as well as fostering collaboration and research on the ground in San Francisco.

Overview

My Role

During my time at Atlassian I wore many hats, going beyond core design of the Atlassian Marketplace focus to elevate patterns, collaborative design strategies (e.g. the Product Playbook), and drive significant research for the entire product suite.

Redesigning Atlassian 3P Marketplace and Internal Plugin Manager: My primary focus was overhauling the external Atlassian Marketplace and the product-internal plugin marketplace to allow third-party developers better ways to build on top of core products—a crucial moat for Atlassian. By rethinking what was previously just a "20% time" project for engineering, I defined foundational design patterns that would eventually scale into the broader Atlassian Design Guidelines.
Defining the Atlassian Playbook: I did deep work to define some of the first collaborative plays in the Atlassian Playbook. This fostered stronger strategy through deep collaboration with product teams, introducing high-level strategy plays (such as trade-off slides, anchors, and engines) alongside deeper tactical exercises.
Elevating patterns and components: Given the nascent design team and component library, I worked to develop a number of patterns including Tables and Forms to help align across the Atlassian Suite, driving user efficiency and saving UX and eng time.
Founding the Contextual Inquiry Program: I established and led Atlassian's contextual inquiry program, spearheading investigations across the Bay Area to define strategic needs for the entire product portfolio. These foundational learnings were bolstered by the rapid-fire guerrilla user testing I drove annually at the Atlassian Summit.

My Role

Redesigning Atlassian 3P Marketplace and Internal Plugin Manager: My primary focus was overhauling the external Atlassian Marketplace and the product-internal plugin marketplace to allow third-party developers better ways to build on top of core products—a crucial moat for Atlassian. By rethinking what was previously just a "20% time" project for engineering, I defined foundational design patterns that would eventually scale into the broader Atlassian Design Guidelines.
Defining the Atlassian Playbook: I did deep work to define some of the first collaborative plays in the Atlassian Playbook. This fostered stronger strategy through deep collaboration with product teams, introducing high-level strategy plays (such as trade-off slides, anchors, and engines) alongside deeper tactical exercises.
Elevating patterns and components: Given the nascent design team and component library, I worked to develop a number of patterns including Tables and Forms to help align across the Atlassian Suite, driving user efficiency and saving UX and eng time.
Founding the Contextual Inquiry Program: I established and led Atlassian's contextual inquiry program, spearheading investigations across the Bay Area to define strategic needs for the entire product portfolio. These foundational learnings were bolstered by the rapid-fire guerrilla user testing I drove annually at the Atlassian Summit.

Impact

My work at Atlassian led to significant, lasting product impact across the ecosystem:

Plugins for Everyone: I delivered a revitalized developer and admin experience for the external Marketplace, as well as a revamped internal upload and management experience. This drove a significant increase in both hosted plugins and plugin downloads. My designs elevated Atlassian's UI, establishing foundational patterns like data tables that scaled across the company.
Driving Strategic Direction: Running 30+ contextual inquiries at large and small companies across the Bay Area uncovered massive opportunities to impact the entire product suite—from Jira to Bitbucket to Confluence. These efforts were lauded by the co-founders and directly influenced multiple core strategy papers, helping grow Atlassian from scrappy mid-size startup to a $19B company.
Collaboration Plays and Foundational Patterns: My foundational work contributed to multiple plays for the official Atlassian Playbook and introduced new, scalable patterns for the design library, fundamentally elevating cross-team collaboration and increasing dev velocity.

Impact

My work at Atlassian led to significant, lasting product impact across the ecosystem:

Plugins for Everyone: I delivered a revitalized developer and admin experience for the external Marketplace, as well as a revamped internal upload and management experience. This drove a significant increase in both hosted plugins and plugin downloads. My designs elevated Atlassian's UI, establishing foundational patterns like data tables that scaled across the company.
Driving Strategic Direction: Running 30+ contextual inquiries at large and small companies across the Bay Area uncovered massive opportunities to impact the entire product suite—from Jira to Bitbucket to Confluence. These efforts were lauded by the co-founders and directly influenced multiple core strategy papers, helping grow Atlassian from scrappy mid-size startup to a $19B company.
Collaboration Plays and Foundational Patterns: My foundational work contributed to multiple plays for the official Atlassian Playbook and introduced new, scalable patterns for the design library, fundamentally elevating cross-team collaboration and increasing dev velocity.

Challenges

Elevating a Side Project: The Atlassian Marketplace and internal plugin systems were initially treated as 20% time projects for engineering. The challenge was transforming these disjointed experiences into a cohesive, centralized ecosystem that could serve as a massive strategic moat for Atlassian. As the first UX in a eng team of 20, I needed to establish the role of UX as well as foundational patterns for the marketplace.

The Translation Gap: Relying on traditional, flat graphic design tools (like Photoshop or Illustrator) created friction. Dynamic web elements—like CSS3 transforms or interactive accordions—were lost in translation during the developer handoff. Minor, pixel-perfect UI fixes were often swallowed by massive Jira backlogs, leading to a degraded user experience.
Bridging the Hemisphere: As one of the first two designers in the San Francisco office, I had to establish strong,
asynchronous collaboration with a 14-person UX team based in Sydney, ensuring our local efforts aligned with and elevated the global product strategy.

Challenges

Elevating a Side Project: The Atlassian Marketplace and internal plugin systems were initially treated as 20% time projects for engineering. The challenge was transforming these disjointed experiences into a cohesive, centralized ecosystem that could serve as a massive strategic moat for Atlassian. As the first UX in a eng team of 20, I needed to establish the role of UX as well as foundational patterns for the marketplace.

The Translation Gap: Relying on traditional, flat graphic design tools (like Photoshop or Illustrator) created friction. Dynamic web elements—like CSS3 transforms or interactive accordions—were lost in translation during the developer handoff. Minor, pixel-perfect UI fixes were often swallowed by massive Jira backlogs, leading to a degraded user experience.
Bridging the Hemisphere: As one of the first two designers in the San Francisco office, I had to establish strong,
asynchronous collaboration with a 14-person UX team based in Sydney, ensuring our local efforts aligned with and elevated the global product strategy.

Research & Driving Strategic Direction

Collaborative Design and getting in the code for Atlassian Marketplace, I got into the code to better understand the structures and design, working closely with engineering in San Francisco to map needs through collaborative design exercises. I published my efforts on the internal Atlassian blog, helping push other designers to make quick commits and explore new ways of collaborating.
I founded and led Atlassian’s first contextual inquiry program, conducting over 30 targeted, in-person investigations at both large and small companies across the Bay Area, I uncovered strategic needs that influenced the entire product portfolio (Jira, Bitbucket, Confluence), shared bi-weekly across the whole company. The research heavily informed our strategic direction. Our discoveries were lauded by the co-founders, directly impacted multiple core strategy papers, and fueled the creation of collaborative plays (like trade-off slides, anchors, and engines) for the Atlassian Playbook.

I led guerrilla testing @ Atlassian Summit to validate our findings at scale, I drove rapid-fire guerrilla usability testing annually at the Atlassian Summit, capturing direct feedback from our most engaged users across 10+ prototypes annually.

Research & Driving Strategic Direction

Collaborative Design and getting in the code for Atlassian Marketplace, I got into the code to better understand the structures and design, working closely with engineering in San Francisco to map needs through collaborative design exercises. I published my efforts on the internal Atlassian blog, helping push other designers to make quick commits and explore new ways of collaborating.
I founded and led Atlassian’s first contextual inquiry program, conducting over 30 targeted, in-person investigations at both large and small companies across the Bay Area, I uncovered strategic needs that influenced the entire product portfolio (Jira, Bitbucket, Confluence), shared bi-weekly across the whole company. The research heavily informed our strategic direction. Our discoveries were lauded by the co-founders, directly impacted multiple core strategy papers, and fueled the creation of collaborative plays (like trade-off slides, anchors, and engines) for the Atlassian Playbook.

I led guerrilla testing @ Atlassian Summit to validate our findings at scale, I drove rapid-fire guerrilla usability testing annually at the Atlassian Summit, capturing direct feedback from our most engaged users across 10+ prototypes annually.

Design

An updated marketplace: I led the end-to-end design for the external Atlassian Marketplace and the internal plugin management tools, revitalizing the experience for both developers and admins.
Designing in the Code: To eliminate the design-to-engineering translation gap and ensure high-fidelity implementation, I integrated directly into the front-end codebase. Using Bitbucket, Git, and Sublime Text, I designed and developed the Marketplace "Getting Started" page—writing the HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript, and navigating the complexities of legacy browser constraints to ensure a pixel-perfect, interactive build.
Foundational Patterns: By getting hands-on with the code and understanding the technical architecture, I was able to define scalable, foundational design patterns. My work on core UI components—such as data tables and keyboard shortcut specifications—ultimately scaled to become integral parts of the broader Atlassian Design Guidelines, increasing cross-team collaboration and development velocity.

Design

An updated marketplace: I led the end-to-end design for the external Atlassian Marketplace and the internal plugin management tools, revitalizing the experience for both developers and admins.
Designing in the Code: To eliminate the design-to-engineering translation gap and ensure high-fidelity implementation, I integrated directly into the front-end codebase. Using Bitbucket, Git, and Sublime Text, I designed and developed the Marketplace "Getting Started" page—writing the HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript, and navigating the complexities of legacy browser constraints to ensure a pixel-perfect, interactive build.
Foundational Patterns: By getting hands-on with the code and understanding the technical architecture, I was able to define scalable, foundational design patterns. My work on core UI components—such as data tables and keyboard shortcut specifications—ultimately scaled to become integral parts of the broader Atlassian Design Guidelines, increasing cross-team collaboration and development velocity.

Impact

My work at Atlassian led to significant, lasting product impact across the ecosystem:

Plugins for Everyone: I delivered a revitalized developer and admin experience for the external Marketplace, as well as a revamped internal upload and management experience. This drove a significant increase in both hosted plugins and plugin downloads. My designs elevated Atlassian's UI, establishing foundational patterns like data tables that scaled across the company.
Driving Strategic Direction: Running 30+ contextual inquiries at large and small companies across the Bay Area uncovered massive opportunities to impact the entire product suite—from Jira to Bitbucket to Confluence. These efforts were lauded by the co-founders and directly influenced multiple core strategy papers, helping grow Atlassian from scrappy mid-size startup to a $19B company.
Collaboration Plays and Foundational Patterns: My foundational work contributed to multiple plays for the official Atlassian Playbook and introduced new, scalable patterns for the design library, fundamentally elevating cross-team collaboration and increasing dev velocity.